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| Volume 49, Number 2, Summer 2000 |
an H.M.S. Beagle Reader Survey
[H.M.S. Beagle recently conducted a reader poll that asked scientists to send in their reason why they fear (or are irritated with, frustrated by, or baffled about) the public. According to this unscientific survey, here are the "Top Ten Reasons Scientists Fear the Public."]
1. GERMS! Scientists often think about things from a microscope's perspective. If only the public knew just how many little creepy crawly things surround them, perhaps they'd be more attentive to sanitary habits!
2. Scientists fear the public because when forced to really explain what they are studying and why at a level understood by the general public-they may realize that it really is a pointless bit of minutia.
3. Because a substantial portion of the public believe they were once abducted by extraterrestrials. Scientists also are afraid that a member of the public will accidentally sit on their glasses.
4. Three words: Torches and pitchforks!
5. Our most frequently asked question by the public is, "Will you be my 'phone-a-friend' for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
6. Because the public are the people who used to steal your lunch money when you were the geek in grade school. As a geeky scientist, you do not make enough money to be able to afford to have your lunch money stolen.
7. Scientists fear the public because no matter how important their research is, or what earth-shattering discoveries they have made, the public will not acknowledge it unless it's endorsed by Leonardo DiCaprio.
8. Scientists worry that the public views them as mad-at least goofy mad like Doc in Back to the Future, and at worst evil mad like Dr. Frankenstein.
9. The reason we fear the public is because they repeatedly ask us jokingly to clone them. Or their greyhound.
10. Scientists fear the public because they dread the day of retribution. That's the day the public will suddenly realize that they are spending billions of dollars to pay for thousands of people to muck around in labs with cool equipment.
Compiled by Julia Kuhl who lives in Heidelberg, Germany, with her neurobiologist husband. Top Ten Reasons Scientists Fear the Public, H.M.S. Beagle, Apr. 28, 2000.